I am from Mason, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. It's most well-known for hosting the annual Western & Southern Open tennis tournament and for the amusement park Kings Island, both of which I have been to many times. My home has changed many times throughout my life. I was born in Cincinnati. When I was little my family moved to Antwerp, Belgium and Ahmedabad, India. Then, I lived in Overland Park, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City) for four years, before we moved to Mason at the start of my high school. Even though I've lived in many places, I consider Mason and the Cincinnati area closest to my heart.
When it came time to apply for college, Duke wasn't on my list. I was sure I wanted to major in computer science and was sure I would go to a school famous for its computer science program. I decided to apply to Duke in my spare time, and to my surprise, I got in! I loved how liberal arts philosophy of Trinity College would expose me to different areas of study while enabling me to go deep in a particular field. I was fascinated by how every student at Duke has unique talents and abilities. I felt that the environment at Duke was special and perfect for me.
From the moment I arrived at Duke, I was resolute in my choice to major in computer science. Since middle school, I had become passionate for computer programming, enabling me to express my creativity while making an impact on the world. I channeled my passion to help those around me, such helping my school's teachers keep track of their after-school duties, helping a local nonprofit preserve the history of Mason, and helping build an app that improves teenagers' mental health.
After taking a statistics class in my first year at Duke, I realized that statistics is key to understanding our world and creating new innovations. It complemented computer science well, providing the basis for understanding cutting- edge technologies such as AI. Therefore, I decided to double major in statistics.
My long-term plans are to be a tech entrepreneur, creating innovative products that make a difference I people's lives. For that reason, I decided to pursue the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate. The I&E coursework provides me with key business concepts and broadens my mind for entrepreneurship. It broadens my understanding of how technology can be harnessed to create new innovations and ventures and enables me to develop a tech entrepreneurial mindset. The combination of my majors and the certificate make my learning at Duke truly interdisciplinary and provide the foundation necessary for me to achieve my goal of becoming a tech entrepreneur and see people the world over lead happier lives.
Although I am yet to create my first venture, I have already completed innovative and entrepreneurial work. In my internship at Optum in the summer of 2022, I collaborated with a team of five interns to develop an application with a novel journaling system that continuously engaged behavioral health clients during wait times between appointments. The application provided useful insights to behavioral health providers, improving treatment outcomes. In the summer of 2023, I interned at Fidelity Investments, where my project partner and I leveraged NLP and voice technologies to develop a tool to search for stocks. Clients would simply speak what types of stocks they were looking for, our application would understand their query, and return the matching stocks. We presented our prototype to senior leadership at Fidelity, and it was recognized as having strong potential to be brought to market.
In my free time, I like to go out for walk or jog, especially surrounded by nature. When I'm on campus, I regularly jog in the Duke Gardens. Very rarely am I asked what my first name, Vedarsh, means. The root of the word is the Sanskrit term “Veda”, meaning knowledge. The Vedas are a set of ancient Hindu scriptures containing vast amounts of knowledge. Therefore, “Vedarsh” is a highly knowledgable person - someone who has the knowledge of the Vedas. It is a very unique name - I haven't met anyone with the same first name - and I think it describes me well.